1. Field of the Invention
An aspect of this disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A program module called a language monitor is used in a printing system of Windows (registered trademark). The language monitor is positioned between a spooler for spooling print data and a port monitor for transmitting the print data to a printer (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2007-080036). Accordingly, the print data spooled by the spooler are input to the language monitor. The language monitor processes the input print data and outputs the processed print data to the port monitor.
Printer manufacturers, for example, can freely design language monitors. In other words, a language monitor can be uniquely designed to perform various processes such as print data processing, log recording, and bidirectional communications with a printer before print data spooled by the spooler are transmitted by the port monitor. Accordingly, it is possible to relatively easily expand the capability of a printing system by installing a language monitor with additional functions.
Here, a language monitor is implemented as a dynamic link library (DLL) that is loaded when a process of the spooler is started and unloaded when the process of the spooler is terminated. Accordingly, unless the process of the spooler is terminated, the language monitor continues to be loaded from when an operating system (OS) is started to when the OS is shut down. Therefore, when a new language monitor with additional functions is installed, it is necessary to restart the process of the spooler after the installation to enable the functions of the language monitor.
However, when the spooler is restarted, print data spooled in the spooler may be discarded. Particularly, when a spooler of a print server for processing print data of plural client PCs is restarted and the print data in the spooler are discarded, it may affect a large number of users. This problem may cause customers to refrain from introducing a printer driver using a language monitor (i.e., a printer that uses such a printer driver).